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by youwerefantasticrose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:51:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwerefantasticrose/pseuds/youwerefantasticrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and TenToo adjust after Bad Wolf Bay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

These things take time, he tries to reassure himself, staring up at the dark ceiling of the guest room of Rose’s flat. He should know all about that. Nine hundred years of it— 

His hand settles on his chest, his one heart beating steadily underneath it.

Two weeks, he corrects himself. He’s been alive for two weeks.

Two weeks since Bad Wolf Bay, since the holes between the universes had been closed, since he’d been here with Rose.

He didn’t know what he’d expected. Not this. Not staying in the guest room, awkward small talk between them, only touching accidentally, hands brushing with murmured apologies as they passed each other in the hallway.

She’s sleeping only a few rooms over, but it feels like they’re still universes apart.

He feels his heart race under his hand, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He couldn’t blame her really. He’s not the same man. He feels like he is, he remembers, he feels, he loves her the same, but he’s different, can feel in beating in his chest, in the way he’s already so, so tired.

Why did he think she’d want him? One kiss on a beach, and he’d felt so sure. But two weeks later, and he doesn’t know.

He’s already lost the universe, does he have to lose her too?

Suddenly the ceiling seems to be closing in on him, the four walls of the room pressing inward, smothering him, like he’s in a box decidedly not bigger on the inside.

The ceiling’s black, a wall between him and the stars that he’ll never venture out into again, and he’s having trouble breathing; how can he do this, how can he live this tiny life? Especially without her?

He covers his face with his hands, palms pressing into his eyes. 

He’ll have to try, he decides. 

&&&

He’s up early the next morning, dressing and heading to the kitchen to make tea. Maybe it’ll calm him, he thinks. He hopes.

He’s just poured himself a mug when she walks in, dressed for work.

“Hey,” she says, dropping her gaze to the floor when their eyes meet.

“Hey,” he responds.

“How’d you sleep?” she asks, and he’s so focused on her that when he reaches for the mug, he’s off by a few inches, and his hand hits it, knocking it off the counter and onto the floor.

He looks down at the pieces, the hot tea spreading on the floor, and his resolve shatters like the remnants of the mug.

“I didn’t sleep,” he answers, looking up at her, his heart pounding. “I can’t— I can’t do this.”

He hurries out of the room, grabbing his coat and leaving, pulling the front door behind him with a slam.

She’s left alone in the kitchen, staring at the mess on the floor.

&&&

He gets a few blocks away when the tears start. It just makes him angrier, how much more he feels now, how it’s so easy for him to cry, so much harder for him to keep everything in like he used to.

Not him, he thinks, wiping his face angrily. The other him.

Suddenly he has so much he wants to say, so much he can’t work through on his own, how he feels like he’s lost so much in so short a time, his freedom, his universe, his other heart, for fuck’s sake. And he’s lost her now too, if he ever even had her.

He’s got so much held in, and it’s too much, too much for his human emotions and his human heart and he just wants to let it out, to talk to someone. To her, he realizes. He just wants her.

The realization stops him in his tracks.

He’d been asking himself which hurt worse, losing time and space or losing her, and it’s right now that he realizes. He turns around, bumping into people walking behind him, apologizing hurriedly.

He’s got to go back.

He’s taken a few steps when he sees her, arms folded across her chest, walking towards him. She hasn’t seen him yet, but she’s looking, neck craning to see over the people around her. She looks forward, her brow furrowed, and then she looks up. She sees him.

They start toward each other at the same time, quick steps, finally meeting in the middle of the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” they say at the same time, and they laugh, the tension dissolving a little.

“What are you sorry for?” he asks, because he really doesn’t know; he’s the one who walked out.

She looks up at him, confused.

“For… everything. You’ve given up everything, and I can see how it’s hurting you. All of time and space, and he left you here. Trapped. I— I know it’s not enough.”

Her eyes well with tears, and he realizes what she thinks, that he’s been avoiding her, grieving over the TARDIS, the universe, because this world’s not enough. Because she’s not enough.

“Oh, Rose, no,” he says, reaching up and cupping her face. She sighs, leaning into the contact. “Of course I miss it, of course it’s hard. But I want this. I want you.”

“Yeah?” she says.

“Yes.”

He leans in, cautiously, and presses his lips to hers, his arms going around her as he pulls her against him. It’s softer, sweeter than that first, desperate kiss on the beach, and he feels like something’s filling him up, warm and buoyant as he kisses her. Hope.

She tastes like home.

He pulls away and looks down at her, smiling up at him. Her eyes are shining, and he sees the universe, brown and speckled with gold, whole solar systems and constellations in them. He knows right then that he’ll happily spend the next sixty years or so exploring her, the whole universe that is Rose Tyler.

He reaches down and finds her hand, intertwining their fingers.

“Let’s go home,” he says, grinning.

“Yeah?” she says, smiling at his word choice.

He tugs at her hand.

“Run.”


End file.
